Seattle's unarmed crisis response program is handling rising call volumes this year, but its reach is restricted by a police union contract, while a city budget proposal pauses hiring for 14 vacant positions. Amy Barden, chief of the city's Community Assisted Response & Engagement department, says her roughly 40-person unit is making the most of its current staffing within the rules; the inspector general found it was working at about 80% of its maximum capacity. Fourteen vacant responder positions remain authorized but have hiring paused under Mayor Katie Wilson's proposed 2027 budget.
A Third Public Safety Option, With Real Constraints
CARE functions as Seattle's third public safety program alongside the Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire Department, dispatched to 911 calls that may not require a police presence. As reported by KUOW, the unit connects callers to referrals for mental health treatment, drug counseling and housing support rather than simply closing out an incident. But a City of Seattle Office of Inspector General review published in August found that the 2025 collective bargaining agreement with the Seattle Police Officers Guild prevents CARE from serving “a significant portion” of its intended population. The contract allows police to override 911 dispatchers' decisions to assign CARE teams and to cancel CARE co-responses, and it blocks CARE from handling calls involving substance abuse, people in homeless encampments, private property, or individuals already in crisis, according to the inspector general's findings.
Despite those restrictions, Barden told KUOW she isn't worried about the contract for now, given where staffing stands. “She is not concerned about the contract while CARE has about 40 people,” the outlet reported, and Barden said the department is maximizing its current capacity despite the constraints. She said she supports pausing further CARE expansion for now in order to refine how responses work and improve coordination with other first responders — while still planning to keep advocating for the program's long-term growth.
Numbers Climbing, Hours Expanding
The call volume backs up the sense of momentum. CARE crisis responders had answered 6,279 calls so far in 2026 as of early August, already closing in on the 7,136 calls logged during all of 2025, according to a City of Seattle bulletin. The city cited that momentum when it expanded Community Crisis Responder hours to provide daily, citywide early-morning and late-night coverage starting Aug. 5 — timing the bulletin said lines up with when roughly 84% of the unit's most common call types come in. A separate account from KOMO News, tied to the city's budget rollout, described the program's alternative-response expansion as reaching five locations and operating from 6:30 a.m. to 1 a.m.
The inspector general's report also found that CARE responders called for police backup in just 1% of calls, and that the unit was working at about 80% of its maximum capacity with its current staffing. In the three weeks before that August report, CARE responses had jumped 32% compared with the prior 12-week average. CARE began answering calls alongside police in fall 2023, and the 2025 SPOG agreement removed an earlier cap on CARE staffing while allowing crisis teams to respond independently to some 911 calls, even as it imposed the new restrictions the inspector general flagged.
Budget Fight Puts 14 Jobs on Hold
Mayor Wilson's proposed 2027 budget would still grow CARE's funding overall, with the department's General Fund allocation proposed to rise from $66.6 million in 2026 to $70.5 million in 2027 and $71 million in 2028, per KOMO News. The city's broader ongoing resources for CARE would reach about $72.6 million in 2027, a net increase of roughly $4 million. But the same proposal removes funding for eight vacant 911 call-taker positions and pauses hiring for 14 vacant community crisis responder positions — though those 14 slots would remain authorized rather than eliminated, according to the same budget reporting. The proposal still requires review and possible changes by the Seattle City Council.
Barden told KUOW those 14 positions are being held off, not eliminated, and said the mayor's office continues to support CARE's response work. She described a broader shift in how police and CARE are working together on the ground: interim Seattle Police Chief Sayles has encouraged his command staff to back CARE responders, and precinct captains now work directly with the unit. Seattle police officers can flag support for CARE when they're already on site, and CARE has begun new pilot programs in different police precincts, timing its outreach to go out around the same time as police foot patrols and targeting known crisis hotspots. Barden also discussed CARE alongside Metropolitan Improvement District ambassadors and other secondary responders, and said she wanted tighter coordination.
Tracking the Toughest Cases
Part of CARE's model involves tracking high-utilizer data on callers who receive repeated responses — some individuals may see 50 to 70 interactions with the team over a period of months, Barden said. She pointed to Orca Center, which provides a 24/7 post-overdose drop-off service along with clinical and medical assessments, five days of emergency housing, and access to long-lasting buprenorphine, as part of the broader safety-net response that complements CARE's street-level work. Barden said early intervention costs less than addressing a crisis after it escalates, and that people should not be left suffering on the street. She said the region remains uncomfortable with involuntary referrals, even as she argued that jails and prisons, while still necessary in her view, should ultimately function more like rehabilitative crisis care centers.
Looking ahead, Barden told KUOW she expects jail bookings, emergency department referrals and the number of people living on the streets to all decline within five years as CARE matures, and said the department now has more capacity than when she started. She continues to argue that the police labor agreement should eventually be rewritten to let CARE operate at full capacity rather than within the current carve-outs.
How Other Cities Compare
Seattle is not alone in building out an unarmed alternative to police response. Denver's Support Team Assisted Response program pairs paramedics and behavioral health professionals in vans to handle certain 911 calls instead of a conventional law enforcement response, according to the Urban Institute. Denver logged 38,375 STAR-eligible calls between June 2020 and December 2023, and the share of those calls actually handled by STAR vans grew from 16% in 2020 to 38% in 2023, with van teams also picking up nearly 7,900 additional calls that weren't initially flagged as eligible. Through October 2023, STAR teams had roughly 6,700 clinical encounters with 4,435 distinct individuals, and about one in five of those people had multiple contacts with the program. More than three-quarters of STAR's clinical encounters identified mental health, rather than substance use, as the priority issue — and the Urban Institute found housing remained the biggest unmet need for STAR clients, with few housing resources available to offer them.
